Another Spiral UFO Appears:This Time Over Australia
Almost exactly six months after the ufology switchboard lit up like a Christmas tree over the now famous “Norway spiral,” a similar phenomenon has been observed in Australia.
The spiral (shown here) that appeared in the pre-dawn sky over Norway December 9, 2009 defied explanation, but theories about its origin ranged from the fantastic (a star gate) to the mundane (malfunctioning Russian missile).
Norway’s top astronomer, Knut Jorgen Roed Odegaard, said it was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He did allow, however, that the spiral might have been a malfunctioning (or "adjusting," as Geoffrey Whyatt of the Sydney Observatory put it) Bulava missile launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.
The fact that Russia denied launching any defective missiles that morning did nothing to diminish mainstream acceptance of this as the most plausible explanation.
Even Norwegian Space Centre Chief Scientist Erik Tandberg, who said he’d been “totally amazed” by the spiral, thought it most likely that a missile was responsible for the two-minute light show.
And there the matter rested until Australia’s 7 News reported that another spiral had appeared June 4 over Australia. Once again, a missile was blamed.
The alleged culprit: a Falcon 9/Dragon rocket launched by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral one hour prior to the spiral sighting.
But Doug Moffett of UFO Research NSW (New South Wales) is unconvinced.
In an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Moffett said, "Firstly, the time of the launch was 18.45 GMT, which translates to 4.45am EST. The duration of the flight was nine minutes 38 seconds. This is a full hour before the reported sightings."
Discover magazine's Phil Plait writes in his Bad Astronomy column, however, that the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket would have sailed over Austrailia at the exact time of the UFO sightings. It was spinning, he said, and it was emitting a "water-sprinkler spiral pattern (of gas) in the sky."
Plait says that the Norway spiral also was "positively identified as a Russian missile."
So it would seem that we've entered a new era of missile technology, one byproduct of which is the occasional spiral light show. If future demonstrations could be timed to coincide with national holidays, that would be ideal.
Follow Technorati